Tourography

To date Climbing PoeTree has traveled to hundreds of cities and towns around the country and globe. We have self-organized 25 national and international tours, crossed the country solo, with a crew of powerful women, on the ground, through the sky, in a grease mobile, and always with wings spread wide.

Below you will find a chronicle of Climbing PoeTree’s past tours, as well as little stories from our travels and the mission behind each journey. Enjoy and look forward to crossing paths with you again!

UNITING THE STATE OF THE AMERICAS

JUNE 1- NOV 3, 2003

Climbing PoeTree made its debut in July of 2003, when Alixa and Naima launched a five-month tour across the nation with a multi-media, spoken-word performance about the War on Drugs: “Uniting the State of the Americas”. Through performance poetry fused with slide projection and movement choreography, they raised awareness about the effects of the drug war on people of the Americas, untangling complex and parallel realities of racism, classism, and violence at home through the booming U.S prison industrial complex and abroad through the US funded military operation; Plan Colombia. In a guise to eradicate drug crops through fumigations, Plan Colombia has devastated the land, poisoned, killed and dislocated its people.

With explosive lyrics and eloquently emotive delivery, Alixa and Naima told a similar and all too familiar story about the criminalization of poor people- both abroad in South America and in our own neighborhoods- and offered healing and empowerment through truth-telling and creative resistance. The dialogs that followed the performance always teemed with personal testimony, invigorated urgency, profound questions and inspired answers. When the lights went out and the echoes faded, a flame burned brighter in the vessel of every audience member who joined in the call for a more just and compassionate world.

MIGRATION TOUR

OCT 1- DEC 10, 2005

Climbing PoeTree embarked on a winged journey around the States, cross-pollinating testimonies of tragedy and triumph through poetic proclamation. In the wake of the immense tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast, and some still unresolved issues from colonization… we found it NECESSARY to speak truth to power!

To confront the gross misrepresentations in mainstream media, the collective need for us as a people to testify to our lived experiences and became even more apparent. We challenged ourselves to think of a way we could not only communicate truths from the communities we represent, but also facilitate in the cross-pollination of the stories of people across this country that we’d meet on our migration. The idea to gather Stories Testimonies Intentions Truths Confessions Healing Expressions and Dreams on little square pieces of cloth and sew them together into a giant quilt grew from this need for new voices to make way for new possibilities. Read more about the history of S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D, a tapestry of truths that now holds more than 5,000 stories written by audience members and workshop participants here.

98.6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Climbing PoeTree completed its third national tour, 98.6º of Separation which touched thousands of people across the nation, from New Orleans to Toronto, Oakland to Atlanta. Highlights included:

Opening for Danny Glover and “Wade in the Water” at the National Black Theater in Harlem

Painting a healing mural with youth in the 9th Ward, New Orleans

Sharing the stage with our home girls LAS KRUDAS (Cuban vegan lesbian feminist stilt-walking hip hop crew) for their first U.S. performance, and our first time in Texas (which we learned is its own country anyways! Don’t mess!)

Decadence and debauchery at Atlanta’s National Black Gay Pride and Oakland’s

Workshops all over the place, from the Harriet Tubman Free School in Albany to Jordan and Crenshaw High in Watts, L.A. We reached hundreds of youth!

Headlining Ladyfest South and rocking the National Lawyers Guild National Convention with Detroit-based emcee, INVINCIBLE

And all the roots events, from “Veye-Yo” in Little Haiti to “Yemaya’s Uprising” in Toronto

That was fun ya’ll! but most importantly…

THE MORAL OF THE STORY
“We live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal… for if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” -James Baldwin

98.6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION IS
ABOUT CONNECTING
OUR STORIES AND STRUGGLES,
MEASURING THE TEMPERATURE
OF OUR COMMON BLOOD,
IN THE MIDST OF GLOBAL
CLIMATE CRISIS
WE BOUT TO HEAT THINGS UP,
SPARK A FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
THAT WE MIGHT REVOLVE
AROUND OUR SUN
THE BRIGHTEST STAR
THAT SITS INSIDE
THE ARTIST ALSO KNOWN AS
LOVE

UPRISING TOUR

JAN 10 – NOV 30, 2007

In 2007, amidst completing and promoting their upcoming Hurricane Season tour, Climbing PoeTree continued to travel doing workshops, performances and panels all over the country. Alixa and Naima even made it across the border to Canada and traveled throughout Hawaii touring with local legend Paula Fuga. Climbing PoeTree was also the keynote performance at Bioneers By The Bay, sharing the stage with powerhouse activists, Van Jones, Simran Sethi, Naomi Wolf, and John Perkins to name a few highlights!

UPRISING TOUR II & HURRICANE SEASON NATIONAL TOUR

JAN 27TH- DEC 13TH 2008

We started this year with a week long residency at the University of Illinois and concluded the year launching the widely-celebrated Hurricane Season National Tour. On the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we began traveling the nation with an all-women crew in a bus converted to run on recycled vegetable oil, delivering this visionary multi-media show and movement-building strategy that connects the issues that surfaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the “unnatural disasters” disenfranchised communities are experiencing nation and world wide on a daily basis. To read more about Hurricane Season click here.

2009 HURRICANE SEASON REGIONAL TOUR

This year was extremely exciting for us. We were invited to present and perform at Esalen Institute. We performed Hurricane Season at the world renowned Riverside Theater in NYC, and shared the stage with Erykah Badu for an audience of 5000 on Hawaii’s shores! We had the honor to share the stage with Toshi Reagon, Me’shell Ndegecello, Angela Davis and Mary Robinson (the first female president of Ireland and incredible environmental activist), Dead Prez, Davey D, and Speech of Arrested Development. And to top it off we performed a sold out Hurricane Season show at the Newark Symphony Hall!